by Meg Cabot
"You okay?" I asked him worriedly.
He didn't see the hand I stretched out toward him. He'd lost his glasses. He fumbled around for them in the plaster dust.
"M-my glasses," he said.
Cee Cee found them and picked them up, brushing them off as best she could before handing them back to him.
"Thanks." Michael put the glasses on, and his eyes, behind the lenses, got very large as he took in the carnage around us. The puppet had missed him, but it had managed to take out a bench and a steel trashcan without any problem whatsoever.
"Oh, my God," Michael said.
"I'll say," Adam said. "If it hadn't been for Suze, you'd have been crushed to death by a giant plaster puppet head. Kind of a sucky way to die, huh?"
Michael continued to stare at the debris. "Oh, my God," he said again.
"Are you all right, Suze?" Gina asked, laying a hand on my arm.
I nodded. "Yeah, I think so. No broken bones, anyway. Michael? How about you? You still in one piece?"
"How would he be able to tell?" Dopey asked with a sneer, but I glared at him, and I guess he remembered how hard I can pull hair, since for once he shut up.
"I'm fine," Michael said. He shoved away the hands Sleepy had stretched out to help him to his feet. "Leave me alone. I said I was fine."
Sleepy backed up. "Whoa," he said. "Excuse me. Just trying to help. Come on, G. Our shakes are melting."
Wait a minute. I threw a startled glance in the direction of my best friend and eldest stepbrother. G? Who's G?
Cee Cee fished a bag out from underneath the waves of shiny purple and gold material. "Hey," she said delightedly. "Is this the book you got for my mom?"
Sleepy, I saw, was walking back toward the food court, his arm around Gina. Gina. My best friend! My best friend appeared to be allowing my stepbrother to buy her shakes and put his arm around her! And call her G!
Michael had climbed to his feet. Some mall cops arrived just about then and went, "Hey, there, guy, take it easy. An ambulance is on its way."
But Michael, with a violent motion, shrugged free of them, and, with a last, inscrutable look at the puppet head, stumbled away, the mall cops trailing after him, obviously concerned about the likelihood of a concussion … or a lawsuit.
"Wow," Cee Cee said, shaking her head. "That's gratitude for you. You save the guy's life, and he takes off without even a thank you."
Adam said, "Yeah. How is it, Suze, that whenever something is about to come crashing down on some guy's head, you always know it and tackle him? And how can I get something to crash down on my head so that you have to tackle me?"
Cee Cee whacked him in the gut. Adam pretended it had hurt, and staggered around comically for a while before nearly tripping over the puppet, and then stopping to stare down at it.
"I wonder what caused it," Adam said. Some mall employees were there now, wondering the same thing, with many nervous glances in my direction. If they'd known my mom was a television news journalist, they probably would have been falling all over themselves in an attempt to give me free gift certificates to Casual Corner and stuff.
"I mean, it's kind of weird if you think about it," Adam went on. "The thing was up there for weeks, and then all of a sudden Michael Meducci stands underneath it, and - "
"Bam," Cee Cee said. "Kind of like … I don't know. Someone up there has got it out for him, or something."
Which reminded me. I looked around, thinking I might catch a glimpse of the owner of that giggle I'd heard, just before the puppet had come down on us.
I didn't see anyone, but that didn't matter. I knew who'd been behind it.
And it sure hadn't been any angel.
CHAPTER 6
"Well," Jesse said when I told him about it later that night. "You know what you have to do, don't you?"
"Yeah," I said sullenly, my chin on my knees. "I have to tell her about that time I found that nudie magazine under the front seat of the Rambler. That oughtta make her change her mind about him real quick."
The scarred eyebrow went up. "Susannah," he said. "What are you talking about?"
"Gina," I said, surprised he didn't know. "And Sleepy."
"No," Jesse said. "I meant about the boy, Susannah."
"What boy?" Then I remembered. "Oh. You mean Michael?"
"Yes," Jesse said. "If what you're telling me is true, he is in a lot of danger, Susannah."
"I know." I leaned back on my elbows. The two of us were sitting out on the roof of the front porch, which happened to stick out beneath my bedroom windows. It was kind of nice out there, actually, under the stars. We were high enough up so that no one could see us - not that anyone but me and Father Dom could see Jesse, anyway - and it smelled good because of the giant pine tree to one side of the porch. It was the only place, these days, that we could sit and talk without fear of being interrupted by people. Well, just one person, actually: my houseguest, Gina.
"So, what are you going to do about it?" In the moonlight, Jesse's white shirt looked blue. So did the highlights in his black hair.
"I have no idea," I said.
"Don't you?"
Jesse looked at me. I hate it when he does that. It makes me feel … I don't know. Like he's mentally comparing me with someone else. And the only someone else I could think of was Maria de Silva, the girl Jesse was on his way to marry when he died. I had seen a portrait of her once. She was one hot babe, for the 1850s. It's no fun, let me tell you, being compared to a chick who died before you were even born.
And always had a hoop skirt to hide the size of her butt under.
"You're going to have to find them," Jesse said. "The Angels. Because if I'm right, that boy will not be safe until they are persuaded to move on."
I sighed. Jesse was right. Jesse was always right. It was just that tracking down a bunch of partying ghosts was so not what I wanted to be doing while Gina was in town.
On the other hand, hanging around with me was not exactly proving to be what Gina wanted to do.
I stood up and walked carefully across the roof tiles, then stooped to peer through the bay windows into my bedroom. The daybed was empty. I picked my way back down to where Jesse was sitting, and slumped down beside him again.
"Jeez," I said. "She's still in there."
Jesse looked down at me, the moonlight playing around the little smile on his face. "You cannot blame her," he said, "for being interested in your brother."
"Stepbrother," I reminded him. "And yes, I can. He's vermin. And he's got her in his lair."
Jesse's smile grew broader. Even his teeth, in the moonlight, looked blue. "They are only playing computer games, Susannah."
"How do you know?" Then I remembered. He was a ghost. He could go anywhere. "Well, sure. The last time you looked, maybe. Who knows what they're doing now?"
Jesse sighed. "Do you want me to look again?"
"No." I was horrified. "I don't care what she does. If she wants to hang around with a big loser like Sleepy, I can't stop her."
"Brad was there, too," Jesse pointed out. "Last time I looked."
"Oh, great. So she's hanging out with two losers."
"I don't understand why you are so unhappy about it," Jesse said. He had stretched out across the tiles, contented as I'd ever seen him. "I like it much better this way."
"What way?" I groused. I couldn't get quite as comfortable. I kept finding prickly pine needles beneath my butt.
"Just the two of us," he said with a shrug. "Like it's always been."
Before I had a chance to reply to what - to me, anyway - seemed an extraordinarily heartfelt and perhaps even romantic admission, headlights flashed in the driveway, and Jesse looked past me.
"Who's that?"
I didn't look. I didn't care. I said, "One of Sleepy's friends, I'm sure. What was that you were saying? About how you like it being just the two of us?"
But Jesse was squinting through the darkness. "This is not a friend of Jake's," he said. "Not bringing with hi
m so much … fear. Could this be the boy, Michael, perhaps?"
"What?"
I swung around and, clinging to the edge of the roof, watched as a minivan pulled up the driveway and parked behind my mother's car.
A second later, Michael Meducci got out from behind the wheel, and with a nervous glance at my front door, began heading toward it, his expression determined.
"Oh, my God," I cried, reeling back from the roof's edge. "You're right! It's him! What do I do?"
Jesse only shook his head at me. "What do you mean, what do you do? You know what to do. You've done this hundreds of times before." When I only continued to stare at him, he leaned forward, until his face was just a couple of inches from mine.
But instead of kissing me like I'd hoped, for one wild heart-pounding moment, he would, he said, enunciating distinctly, "You're a mediator, Susannah. Go mediate."
I opened my mouth to inform him that I highly doubted Michael was at my house because he wanted help with his poltergeist problem, considering he couldn't know I was in the ghostbusting business. It was much more likely that he was here to ask me out. On a date. Something that I was sure had never occurred to Jesse, since they probably didn't have dates back when he'd been alive, but which happened to girls in the twenty-first century with alarming regularity. Well, not to me, necessarily, but to most girls, anyway.
I was about to point out that this was going to ruin our wonderful opportunity to be alone together when the doorbell rang, and deep inside the house, I heard Doc yell, "I'll get it!"
"Oh, God," I said, and dropped my head down into my hands.
"Susannah," Jesse said. There was concern in his voice. "Are you all right?"
I shook myself. What was I thinking? Michael Meducci was not at my house to ask me out. If he'd wanted to ask me out, he would have called like a normal person. No, he was here for some other reason. I had nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
"I'm fine," I said, and got slowly to my feet.
"You don't sound fine," Jesse said.
"I'm fine," I said. I started crawling back into my room, through the open window Spike used.
I had wiggled most of the way in when the inevitable thump on my door occurred. "Enter," I said from where I lay, collapsed against the window seat, and Doc opened the door and stuck his head into my room.
"Hey, Suze," he whispered. "There's a guy here to see you. I think it's that guy you all were talking about at dinner. You know, the guy from the mall."
"I know," I said to the ceiling.
"Well," Doc said, fidgeting a little. "What should I do? I mean, your mom sent me up here to tell you. Should I say you're in the shower, or something?" Doc's voice became a little dry. "That's what girls always have their brothers say when my friends and I try calling them."
I turned my head and looked at Doc. If I'd had to choose one Ackerman brother to be stuck with on a desert island, Doc would definitely have been my pick. Red haired and freckle faced, he hadn't quite grown into his enormous ears yet, but at only twelve he was by far the smartest of my stepbrothers.
The thought of any girl making up an excuse to avoid talking to him made my blood boil.
His statement tweaked my conscience. Of course I wasn't going to make up an excuse. Michael Meducci may be a geek. And he may not have acted with any real class earlier that day at the mall. But he was still a human being.
I guess.
I said, "Tell him I'll be right down."
Doc look visibly relieved. He grinned, revealing a mouthful of sparkling braces. "Okay," he said, and disappeared.
I climbed slowly to my feet, and sauntered over to the mirror above my dressing table. California had greatly improved both my complexion and my hair. My skin - only slightly tanned thanks to SPF 15 sunblock - looked fine without any makeup, and I'd given up trying to straighten my long brown hair, and simply let it curl. A single hit of lip gloss, and I was on my way. I didn't bother changing out of my cargo pants and T-shirt. I didn't want to overwhelm the guy, after all.
Michael was waiting for me in the living room, his hands shoved in his pants pockets, looking at the many school portraits of me and my stepbrothers that hung upon the wall. My stepfather was sitting in a chair he never sat in, talking to Michael. When I walked in he dried up, then climbed to his feet.
"Well," Andy said after a few seconds of silence. "I'll just leave the two of you alone, then." Then he left the room, even though I could tell he didn't want to. Which was kind of strange, since Andy usually takes only the most perfunctory interest in my affairs, except when they happen to involve the police.
"Suze," Michael said when Andy was gone. I smiled at him encouragingly since he looked like he was about to expire from nervousness.
"Hey, Mike," I said easily. "You okay? No permanent injury?"
He said with a smile that I suppose he meant to match mine, but which was actually pretty wan, "No permanent injury. Except to my pride."
In an effort to diffuse some of the nervous energy in the room, I flopped down onto one of my mom's armchairs - the one with the Pottery Barn slipcover she was always yelling at the dog for sleeping on - and said, "Hey, it wasn't your fault the mall authority did a shoddy job of hanging up their mardi gras decorations."
I watched him carefully to see how he replied. Did he know? I wondered.
Michael sank into the armchair across from mine. "That's not what I meant," he said. "I meant that I'm ashamed of the way I acted today. Instead of thanking you, I - well, I behaved ungraciously, and I just came by to apologize. I hope you'll forgive me."
He didn't know. He didn't know why that puppet had come down on him, or he was the best damned actor I'd ever seen.
"Um," I said. "Sure. I forgive you. No problem."
Oh, but it was a problem. To Michael, it was apparently a great big problem.
"It's just that - " Michael got up out of the chair and started pacing around the living room. Our house is the oldest one in the neighborhood - there's even a bullet hole in one of the walls, left over from when Jesse had been alive, when our house was a haven for gamblers and gold rushers and fiances on their way to meet their brides. Andy had rebuilt it almost from scratch - except for the bullet hole, which he'd framed - but the floorboards still creaked a little under Michael's feet as he paced.
"It's just that something happened to me this weekend," Michael said to the fireplace, "and ever since then … well, strange things have been happening."
So he did know. He knew something, anyway. This was a relief. It meant I didn't have to tell him.
"Things like that puppet falling down on you?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
"Yeah," Michael said. "And other things, too." He shook his head. "But I don't want to burden you with my problems. I feel badly enough about what happened."
"Hey," I said with a shrug. "You were shaken up. It's understandable. No hard feelings. Listen, about what happened to you this weekend, do you want to - "
"No." Michael, usually the quietest of people, spoke with a forcefulness I'd never heard him use before. "It's not understandable," he said vehemently. "It's not understandable, and it's not excusable, either. Suze, you already - I mean, that thing with Brad earlier today - "
I stared at him blankly. I had no idea what he was getting at. Although, looking back on it, I should have. I really should have.
"And then when you saved my life at the mall....It's just that I was trying so hard, you know, to show you that that's not who I am - the kind of guy who needs a girl to fight his battles for him. And then you did it again...."
My mouth dropped open. This was not going at all the way it was supposed to go.
"Michael," I began, but he held up a hand.
"No," he said. "Let me finish. It's not that I'm not grateful, Suze. It's not that I don't appreciate what you're trying to do for me. It's just that...I really like you, and if you would agree to go out with me this Friday night, I'll show you that I am not the sn
iveling coward I've acted like so far in our relationship."
I stared at him. It was as if the gears in my mind had slowed suddenly to a halt. I couldn't think. I couldn't think what to do. All I could think was, Relationship? What relationship?
"I've already asked your father," Michael said from where he stood in the center of our living room. "And he said it was all right as long as you were home by eleven."
My father? He'd asked my father? I had a sudden picture of Michael talking to my dad, who'd died over a decade earlier, but who frequently shows up in ghost form to torture me about my bad driving skills, and other things like that. He'd have gotten an enormous kick, I knew, out of Michael - one I'd never likely hear the end of.
"Your stepfather, I mean," Michael corrected himself, as if he'd read my thoughts.
But how could he have read my thoughts when they were in such confusion? Because this was wrong. It was all wrong. It wasn't supposed to go like this. Michael was supposed to tell me about the car accident, and then I would say, in a kind voice, that I already knew. Then I'd warn him about the ghosts, and he either wouldn't believe me, or he'd be eternally grateful, and that would be the end of it - except, of course, I'd still have to find the RLS Angels and quell their murderous wrath before they managed to get their mitts on him again.
That's how it was supposed to go. He wasn't supposed to ask me out. Asking me out was not part of the program. At least, it had never gone like that before.
I opened my mouth - not in astonishment this time, but to say, Gee, no, Michael, I'm sorry, but I'm busy this Friday … and every Friday for the rest of my life, incidentally - when a familiar voice beside me said, quickly, "Think before you say no, Susannah."
I turned my head, and saw Jesse sitting in the armchair Michael had vacated.
"He needs your help, Susannah," Jesse went on, swiftly, in his deep, low voice. "He is in very grave danger from the spirits of those he killed - however accidentally. And you are not going to be able to protect him from a distance. If you alienate him now, he'll never let you close enough to help him later when he's really going to need you."
I narrowed my eyes at Jesse. I couldn't say anything to him, of course, because Michael would hear me and think I was talking to myself, or worse. But what I really wanted to say was, Look, this is taking everything a little too far, don't you think?
